Eduardo Luis Rodriguez

More colour photographs would have been nice, but this guide to Havana's wealth of modernist architecture is informative and easy to use. I searched out several of the buildings in Habana del Este, where I used to live, and used the guide to do a full-day architectural tour in Miramar, once the pre-revolutionary playground of the rich and famous and now Havana's diplomatic district.

Miramar and Vedado are good places to see better preserved architecture than you will find in old Havana and Centro - though it is interesting to see how even some of these places have decayed, sometimes becoming squatter residences, as in the oceanfront former modernist Arabic mansion of Martial Facio, or community centers, as in the hideously transformed and secularized Missouri Lutheran Church, which contrasts garishly with the crisp white modernism of its first incarnation.

Notable omissions from the book include the art deco gem, Edificio Bacardi, completed in 1929 and one of the few spectacularly well preserved buildings in an often decrepit cityscape, and the National Art Schools conceived and built along revolutionary principles, 1961-65, but abandoned and therefore mentioned in this guide only in passing. These oversights are disappointing.

Other important modernist landmarks, such as the Hotels Riviera and Habana Libre (formerly the Hilton), are well represented here, as are many of the city's modernist apartment blocks, churches, cinemas, civic structures and private residences.

This book is for the serious architectural enthusiast. It really is a guide, intended to be used on street-level, and not a coffee table book. Divided by neighbourhood and furnished with area maps, it is relatively easy to use, though the sprawling areas of Habana del Este and the western districts of Nautico, Cubanacan etc should not be attempted without transportation.… (más)